Palm Beach, New South Wales

Where it sits. Palm Beach occupies the tip of a narrow sand peninsula at the northern end of Sydney's Northern Beaches, 41 kilometres from the city centre. It is water on three sides: the Tasman Sea and open surf to the east, the sheltered estuary of Pittwater to the west, and Broken Bay opening to the Hawkesbury River to the north. The peninsula ends at Barrenjoey Head, a sandstone knob 113 metres high that was an island until the sand isthmus, or tombolo, joined it to the mainland. That geography gives the suburb two entirely different beaches within a few hundred metres of each other, and gives film crews an ocean beach with no visible development behind it.

The story behind it. Governor Arthur Phillip explored the estuary in 1788 and named the headland Barrenjuee, from a local word usually glossed as young kangaroo. A customs station operated at the base of the head from the 1840s to intercept smugglers working the Hawkesbury. A light was first shown from the headland in 1855, using a pair of temporary towers; the present Barrenjoey Lighthouse was completed in 1881 to a design by the New South Wales colonial architect James Barnet, built of sandstone quarried on the headland itself, along with three keepers' cottages. It was automated in 1932 and converted to solar power in 1972. The suburb below developed as a weekender colony between the wars and is now one of Australia's wealthiest postcodes, with just 1,652 permanent residents at the 2021 census.

On screen. Palm Beach is Summer Bay. Home and Away has filmed here continuously since the series began in 1988, making it one of the longest-running location shoots in world television and, by a considerable margin, Australia's most-watched exported image of a beach.

• The North Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club building doubles as the Summer Bay Surf Club; the seaward side of the building is painted with the fictional name, which is why visitors find a real club with a television club's signage.
• The ocean beach north of the club, the rock platform and the dunes carry most of the exterior drama; the Barrenjoey headland appears constantly in establishing shots.
• The show's interiors are shot at a studio in Sydney's inner west, so the diner and the Summer Bay house do not exist on the peninsula.
• Two unrelated features called Palm Beach were shot here, in 1980 and again in 2019, the latter directed by Rachel Ward with Bryan Brown and Sam Neill.

Location filming happens most weekdays, is unfenced, and is simply part of the beach's ordinary life — cast and crew work around swimmers rather than the other way round. The show is a genuine driver of visitation: British, German and Irish viewers have followed Summer Bay for decades, and the Northern Beaches tourism figures reflect it. Guided walking tours of the filming sites run several times a week from the surf club, and the production posts notices on the promenade when a scene is being shot, so a casual visitor can usually work out where the cameras will be.

What you actually see today. The walk to the lighthouse is the reason to come. Two routes climb from the Station Beach car park at the northern end of Pittwater: the Access Trail, a steady service road, and the Smugglers Track, which is steeper, rougher and quicker. Either takes twenty-five to forty minutes and ends at a 360-degree view over Pittwater, Broken Bay, Lion Island and the ocean beach unrolling south. Volunteers open the tower for guided climbs on Sundays. Back at sea level, Station Beach on the Pittwater side is flat, shallow and windless — the swimming choice for families — while the ocean side has a patrolled surf beach with a rock pool at its southern corner. Whales pass close offshore between June and November.

Getting there and timing. The B1 bus from Wynyard runs the length of the peninsula and takes about ninety minutes; driving takes an hour without traffic and parking is metered and full by mid-morning on summer weekends. The most enjoyable arrival is by water: seaplanes land on Pittwater from Rose Bay, and the Palm Beach Ferry crosses to Ettalong Beach on the Central Coast, with a separate service serving Great Mackerel Beach, Currawong, Coasters Retreat and The Basin in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. October to April suits swimming; the headland climb is better done in the cool of the morning, when the sandstone still holds shade and the light across Pittwater is at its cleanest.